Explaining differences in productive efficiency: An application to Belgian municipalities

The purpose of this paper is to measure and explain variations in productive efficiency of municipal governments in Belgium. Technical efficiency is evaluated using a non-parametric method based on the Free Disposal Hull (FDH) reference technology. We first calculate input, output, and graph Farrell efficiency measures for a cross-section of all 589 Belgian municipalities. In a second stage of the analysis we explain the calculated differences in efficiency in terms of variables related to the structural characteristics of municipalities and to the institutional environment.     

The convergence of fiscal regimes and the decline of the Tiebout effect

A measure of waste from the competitive rent-seeking activity of special interest groups in federal, state and local budgets was calculated over the period 1900–88. This period in U.S. fiscal history is characterized by constitutional changes that have made for more transparency in governmental fiscal activities and for greater diffusion of taxes. The XVI Amendment to the Constitution created the progressive individual income tax (the corporate income tax was judged to be an excise tax in 1909 and passed the test of constitutionality). High marginal tax rates are a justification for a high average level of taxation. The Full Employment Act of 1946 insitutionalized government deficits as a means of meeting a political objective. As a result, opportunities for rent-seeking through budgetary reallocations rose in the United States. In the first two decades of the 20th century, waste at all levels of government represented about 10 percent of incremental national output. Today, waste is three times that amount.The transparency and diffusion of taxes are highest at the federal level and least at the local level. Rent-seeking through budgetary reallocation has followed the public purse. One explanation for the observed centralization of government in the 20th century may be that opportunities to concentrate benefits and diffuse taxes are highest at the federal level.     

Workers' compensation: 1984-88 benchmark revisions.

About 93.1 million workers were covered under workers' compensation laws in 1988--an increase of 11 percent from the 1984 total. Benefit amounts totaled $30.7 billion--an increase of about 56 percent since 1984. Of the total payments made under the workers' compensation program, $17.6 billion went to disabled workers, $1.6 billion to their survivors, and $11.5 billion for medical care. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is interested in measuring economic security in the United States, and workers' compensation plays a large role in that measurement. This article represents one part of our overall effort to determine the roles the various income-maintenance programs play in helping citizens of the United States achieve economic security. The figures presented here provide readers with an opportunity to review workers' compensation program operations during much of the 1980's. Workers' compensation is also important to SSA because that program is directly related to the Social Security Disability Insurance program. Since 1965, Social Security disability benefits have been subject to reduction if the beneficiary also receives workers' compensation and the combined benefits exceed 80 percent of previous earnings. In addition, SSA has been directly involved in providing income maintenance for disability from work-related diseases since 1969 when the Federal Black Lung benefits program was established.     

On the political economy of state highway expenditures: Some evidence of the relative performance of alternative public choice models

This paper explores the extent to which the public demand for roads and/or power of special interest groups determines road expenditures at the state level using an extension of the methodology developed in Congleton and Shughart (1990). Reduced form models of median voter demand, special interest group equilibria, and a combined model are estimated using cross-sectional state data from the United States. We generally find support for the hypothesis that voting matters. The pure median voter models have a better fit than the pure special interest group models. Moreover, in our combined model, we find that variables from the median-voter model can not be dropped without significantly reducing the combined model's fit.     

Heterogenous demand for public goods: Behavior in the voluntary contributions mechanism

Numerous laboratory experiments have investigated the performance of several processes for providing public goods through voluntary contributions. This research has been able to identify features of the institution or environment which are reliably likely to produce outcomes “close” to the free riding outcome or “substantially” greater than the pessimistic prediction of standard models. One such feature is the “marginal per-capita return” (MPCR) from the public good. Various authors have altered MPCR between groups or for an entire group at the same time. The experiments reported here address a different question, “What would happen if, within a group, some persons faced a ‘high’ MPCR while others faced a ‘low’ MPCR?”     

Organizing research in an information society

His publications include Guidelines to the Decentralization of Government Furnctions; Utilization of RANN Research Results: A Survey of the Research Applied to National Needs Program of the National Science Foundation;and A Strategy for Improving Education in Science and Mathematics.